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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Summer is here again. With it came a wedding that needed performing and lots more time that the kiddo isn't in school (and therefore is up later at night.) That said, not much of it (outside of the wedding) should have interfered with gaming. But, gaming has been sparse since about mid May.

In May +Crystal Summerfield and I decided we needed to kick off our relationship mentioned here. She also joined our Friday night group. I have since moved the Friday night group playing C&C in the Lost Lands to a bi-weekly game out of a desire to play. Every other week my good friend Jon is running a 5E game in which I play a paladin whose faith is strongly based upon medieval Moorish practices.

This should all be well and good. Except... we have since played my game exactly once and played only one real session of the 5E campaign. Summer. Schedules. Bleh.

I also decided to run a Monday night game on G+ through the summer only. This was going to be Swords & Wizardry, plus Goldenrod and I was going to run Keep on the Borderlands (I shouldn't be using past tense here, as this is still happening.) Last night was to be our first session of this. Unfortunately we were faced with drama on two fronts. We decided to wade through the drama and begin playing anyway. Then we discovered that a player was sick and couldn't play. Three strikes and your out, right? Yeah. We cancelled. We SHOULD be playing this next week. Also on the 10th we SHOULD be returning to the 5E campaign, and the following week returning to C&C.

Additionally, many of the same issues that have withheld actual gaming, have also put a wrench in getting much writing done in the second installment of Goldenrod. I have some stuff. I need TIME to finish up new spells. This, I should be able to work on a bit the next few evenings, hopefully.

There were a couple of one off highlights in there. Crystal and I played a one on one session of TSRs old "The Gem and the Staff" module last week. A few weeks before that, she got to play through some of "Tomb of Horrors" for the first time. So, there has been some gaming goodness in there.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The next few inspirational posts (now called Appendix Nspiration, see what I did there?) will be devoted to the art of Michael Whelan. The first of these is truly drawn form Appendix N. Michael Whelan did a series of iconic covers for Michael Moorcock's Elric novels. Many of these are also recognizable by fans of 70's and 80's Metal, as they were picked up as album covers.

Elric himself holds a special place for me (though I presume this to be true of many old school gamers.) I have always identified strongly with the forlorn albino sorcerer, emperor of his people. He wasn't of the best health, needing special medicines to survive, when first we meet him. When I first read Elric of Melnibone I was young, and rarely in the best health. I was out of school several times a year for more than a week at a time with all manner of illnesses. I had an interest in the spiritual, the occult and all things fantasy. This character strongly appealed to me. Because of my interests, I was not looked on favorably by family or many of my classmates (though I had several loyal friends. Another common factor with this character. Elric's views were different than the dark society from which he sprang. My views were quite different from my peers as well. As I said, I strongly identified with this albino sorcerer. I love his exploits, and they shaped much of my early roleplaying experience, as much, if not more than Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander (more on these at another time.)

I was exposed to the art of the Brothers Hildebrandt at a very early age, though it wasn't until I was twelve that I truly began to discover (and devour) the are of Michael Whelan. Much of his art shaped my gaming at the same time as I was discovering Moorcock. So, it is that I give you a combination of the two, in today's Appendix Nspriration.

Friday, June 12, 2015

UPDATE! We are past our official deadline and extended deadline. This is LAST CALL for getting events submitted before pre-registration and ticket sales open! Get your events submitted by Thursday evening 9/17/2015 and I may still be able to get you in. Event submission officially ends on October 6th, but if your events are not registered by tomorrow night, your event will not be available during pre-registration for ticket sales or visability. So, if you have any ideas for a game at U-Con this year, get it in.

It's announcement time folks! It's official. The OSR Track at U-con in Ypsilanti Michigan is set to go this year! I will, again, be filling the roll of OSR Track Coordinator. Last year went very well and we had quite a draw for a first time track. I have been given permission to expand upon the old school gaming goodness that we can accept within the track this year (based partly on the discussion had during the roundtable that occurred in our seminar last year.) If you haven't listened to the seminar, go ahead right over here on Save or Die!

With that in mind, I proudly announce that event submissions are officially open! Go ahead and register your events right here. If your event will qualify for the OSR Track (or any other tracks) please explicitly make that known in the comments box. I will be organizing the track events myself this year, so I will attempt to keep everyone's events precisely in the slot that they want to run in.

What qualifies as an OSR event this year? Well, let me tell you good people about the plethora of awesomeness that you can submit to me. Firstly we have D&D. But not all D&D of course (pssh, we have to have some type of integrity you know. Not to mention leaving some games for the other tracks.)

If I missed your favorite, contact me and make sure, but it will likely be fine to run.

Retro-Clones:

Swords & Wizardry

OSRIC

Cryptworld

Labyrinth Lord

Mutant Future

Dark Dungeons

Delving Deeper

Blueholme

For Gold & Glory

Spellcraft & Swordplay etc.

Near Clones:

Dungeon Crawl Classics

Adventurer Conqueror King

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Castles & Crusades

White Star

X-Ploerers

Adventures Dark & Deep

Warriors of the Red Planet

Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Roleplaying Game etc.

Again, this list is hardly exhaustive regarding all of the great Old School RPGs in the world. If you have one you want to run and it isn't here, just let me know. Let's make this thing huge. I want to give your favorite Old School game a place to live and breathe.

Friday, June 5, 2015

It's been some time coming, but I am pleased to present you with the first of the Inspirational posts. It was my intent to do these as a Wednesday thing, but I thing that I'll just post them as inspiration hits. The first will also be the last of all things Hildebrandt for a while. So, without further ado, I give you The Brothers Hildebrandt Atlantis 1982 Calendar in all of it's glory. Sword & Sorcery? Got it. Sword & Planet? Got it. 1950's era Sci Fi? It's there. Mammoths? Yep. Dinosaurs? Fuck yeah. It's all there. Maybe we should make a community campaign setting out of this thing. I think it would be a good White Box meets White Star game.